The Altarpiece That Refused to Look Away

In the early 1500s, the German painter Matthias Grunewald was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim, France — a hospital that treated patients suffering from ergotism, a terrible disease that covered the body in boils and rotting skin. What Grunewald painted was an act of extraordinary courage.

On the outer panels, visible when the altarpiece was closed, he depicted Christ on the cross — not the serene, idealized Christ of so many Renaissance paintings, but a body ravaged with the same sores and lesions that covered the patients in that very hospital. His fingers splay in agony. His skin is mottled and torn. Grunewald refused to sanitize the suffering.

It took courage to paint that. Courage to say to people wasting away from disease: God knows what your body feels like. He wore your wounds.

But here is the breathtaking part. When the panels of the Isenheim Altarpiece are opened, behind that broken body blazes the Resurrection — Christ bursting from the tomb in a blinding explosion of golden light, His skin radiant and whole.

Grunewald understood something about courage that we need to hear: true courage does not skip past Friday to get to Sunday. It sits with the suffering. It looks the wound full in the face. And only then does it open the panels to reveal the glory waiting on the other side.

Whatever cross you are carrying today, take heart. The God who was not afraid of your pain is the same God who has already painted your resurrection.